Snow Pit from Mid elevation on Andesite

Our group toured around Castle Valley and Andesite Peak yesterday. We were pleased to find the sun poking out in the morning to early afternoon with cool temps and calm winds. Snow quality was fair with an obvious storm density change in the top 15cm from flucuating temps during the previous 24 hours. We dug a pit in a low angle snow field at 7500' on a NE aspect. Our pit revealed a relatively rightside up snowpack with a wet wet layer (Dec 12/13 rain event) down about 55cm. The new storm snow had a less dense layer sandwiched between the rain layer and end of storm snow which was more dense. Our test results showed easy shears on the storm density change down 20cm. Upon further detail, we found small facets forming on top of a decompising rain crust about 100cm down. We had no test results on these small, yet sugary grains.